standing on a star unstable

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder opens with a mystery. In colonial Peru, a bridge collapses, and five people plummet to their deaths. A friar, who witnessed this event, has been trying to sort out God's plan by analyzing the deaths of plague victims, realizes he has a perfect opportunity to understand God's plan here--with plague victims, there was just too much, but with just five people, he can figure out WHY these people, and WHY this way, and WHY now.

Like Lost, the book opens with a mystery that never gets solved.

Like Lost, the book pretends to explore the mystery, while instead exploring the lives of the interrelated characters in detail.

And like Lost, in the end, the answer isn't the answer to the mystery, the answer is... love.

Which I understood when I watched it, but anghara articulated it: "They were all remembering - they were all remembering LOVE. And there was something utterly powerful in that, something visceral, something that I NEVER really expected to see explored in contemporary American television."

It clicked then.

The last bit of The Bridge of San Luis Rey says:

"But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." (emphasis mine)

You almost have to wonder why Sawyer wasn't reading this book at one point. Only, it might've been too big a tip-off.

We are at the lake for the Hastings Point Workshop 2010, just five leetle writers, and five beeeg manuscripts (well, not really).

The body count has been high. One of the "fold-out, easy-clean" windows folded OUT onto my nose on Thursday while I was closing the window. Though Kelly (kelly_swails) saw it in slow motion and shouted "Nooooooo!!!!!" in a super-slo-mo voice and almost leapt across Dave (daveamongus) to save me, alas, I was not to be saved, and only my awesome bruise-proof skin has saved me from looking like I got beat up butt-good.

(Seriously. As often as I walk into stuff, I should be COVERED in bruises. I hardly ever have even one.)

I do have some minor swelling right between my eyebrows, which is kinda awesome, because that burgeoning set of parallel forehead wrinkles is totally gone. Botox for the accident prone.

THEN, Kelly called downstairs that she needed a bandaid...

'Cause she stepped on her pants while pulling them up in the bathroom, stumbled against the vanity, and gashed her thigh open.

THEN, Dave stubbed his toe.

So far, Elizabeth and Steve are unscathed.

We did a lot of good work last year at this workshop, and we're doing a lot of good work this year, too. A totally different atmosphere from retreats, formal or informal. Structure! We has it! We have gotten lots of good craft and market talks in as well, and a lot of seriously good writer bonding. Elizabeth (dendrophilous) and Steve (steve_buchheit) may not be injured, but they do know how to laugh at us.

More later.

It is no secret that when I started out writing "The Herbalist's Apprentice," it was a novelette for the Jim Hines/Cats Curious Press fairy tale retelling project.

A novelette is an easier project to start than a novel. It can handle more whimsy in its start-up choices. To whit, the setting of my book--1489 pseudo-Romania--was largely predicated on the fact that my cousin had married a Romanian woman and I wanted to know more about her heritage, and.... in that time period, my princesses could wear pointy hats.

Because, of course, the fairy tale I'd chosen to rewrite was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," something I'd meant to rewrite all my life. Or maybe just a huge chunk of it. Seriously, after reading Robin McKinley's Beauty, I went through my Reader's Digest The World's Best Fairy Tales




and put check marks and dots in the table of contents to indicate to myself which one of the stories I wanted to rewrite as fairy tales, some day. I was probably 12. Ish.

Anyway, it so happened that there is a robust Romanian version of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," so that sealed it. Romania. Dancing princesses. And when? Well, when princesses had pointy hats, because the illustration inside of the Reader's Digest The World's Best Fairy Tales showed princesses in pointy hats and I'd freaking imprinted on them.

The only problem with Romania during the pointy hat era is that it's full of Dracula and his drama. That dude was not amenable to my light-hearted romp through pointy-princess-hatland. So I ended up setting the book about ten years after he died--the very edge of the pointy-princess-hat era. I figured: well, Romania was the edge of the Christian world at that point, so maybe fashions don't quite trickle over so quickly to even the nobility. It's not like the courts of the time were glittering palaces of delicate court intrigue. No, the courts of the time were defensive fortresses of brutal political intrigue. Totally different atmospheres. Not so fashion-forward.

The latter stage of pointy hatness involves the butterfly hennin. I really didn't want to go pre-Dracula (for whatever misty reason that escapes me at the time--maybe because I liked the political situation of post-Dracula too much; maybe for a GIANT SPOILER FOR BOOKS NOT YET WRITTEN. *shrug* I mean, I know why it's gotta be then NOW, but did I know why then?), when pointy hats were SO pointy they were called steeple hennins. (Hennin being the name for this hat-veil combo that pointy hats are really all about.) There are steeple hennins, heart hennins, flowerpot hennins, and butterfly hennins. And probably some other ones I never figured out.

Anyway, here's the butterfly hennin, complete with relatively pointy hat:



So, my go-to book of that time, The Evolution of Fashion, placed butterfly hennins with the sort of sleek, low-slung, belt over the hips, off-the shoulder, medieval dress that you see in about half the movies about the Middle Ages. So I wrote those into my story. One of my early critiquers is in SCA, and she pointed out that the dresses that accompany butterfly hennins are different--there's an overdress/underdress situation, and they're cinched tight, high on the waist. The opposite of the low-slung belt over the hips.

I put that out of my mind for a long time, because well, hey, The Evolution of Fashion said otherwise, I had bigger problems to fix in my book, and I figured, even if the book was wrong, you could argue that the butterfly hennin was still popular but the new mode of dress had made it to Romania. Or something. It's not like there was no trade and no fashion amongst the nobility. Also, the edges of fashion trends are mutable; and the dress and the hat do not always progress forward in lockstep in all locations.

But you know what? That's too hard to justify. It's impossible to justify within the text, because none of my characters have any idea what's fashion forward in Burgundy at the time, so wouldn't even know how to explain why they're wearing a dress out of step with their hat.

So I went and did the research, compiling photo references of butterfly hennins on the web. And wouldn't you know, every single contemporaneous image is of the kind of dress my critiquer in the SCA drew me a picture of in the margin of my manuscript. Of course. Because all the images are compiled by SCA women.

But that's the point. Even if I could justify the mixing of styles a little--the edge of an era, and all that--I'd be throwing every one of my SCA butterfly hennin-knowledgeable readers out of the story as they argued to themselves about the thing. And that's not worth it. Not when I can't explain it in the text, not when I can't find a single photo reference for justifying The Evolution of Fashion's line drawing of their approximation of the style.

So, all that, and now I have to go change every single princess dress in the story.

*sigh*

I really should have taken a picture of my desk a couple hours ago, when I reached critical despair about my organizational plan for my office. A trip to the store later, and I am making steadyish progress in repairing the Clutter That Is.

The subdivision's annual yard sale is this week. I am definitely participating. I hope to get rid of many things... Unfortunately, we live at the end of the circle, and when my neighbors don't participate (most years), we don't attract too many folks down this way. When they do, it's steadily busy, not unlike Halloween. But I figure I will spend the downtime gardening, if I get downtime, and call it a day if I don't.

Anyway, that's a few days off, and I still have an organizational deficit. Too many papers. Not enough cubbies. I'm working on it, though. Here's the During shot (a little late for Before):



Also, here's my cat nomming on the aloe plant, until I moved the comfy chair away from the window/plant stand:



...apropos of nothing, but I think it's funny. Or I did once I rescued my plant.

The Underworld (not the criminal one, the metaphysical one) figures prominently in my book. (I'm delighted that I can now say "which one?" when talking about my books, but at this point, I can also pretty much determine that The Book is the one I've sold. Oh, liminal states, you never fail to entertain me.)

All that Underworld research led to a short story by itself. I started writing it blithely under the title "Thirty Rules for Commuting to the Underworld" and then, about three rules into the writing, changed it to "Five Rules for Commuting to the Underworld." I'm always amused when that sort of thing happens. You'd think I'd stop titling things before I write them, especially when there are concrete numbers involved.

Anyway, then this happened:

today before I checked my email

Pending responses for last 12 months: 3
Acceptance ratio for the past 12 months: 21.05 %
Congratulations! Your overall acceptance ratio is higher than the average for users who have submitted to the same markets.

today after I checked my email

Pending responses for last 12 months: 2
Acceptance ratio for the past 12 months: 25.00 %
Congratulations! Your overall acceptance ratio is higher than the average for users who have submitted to the same markets.

Yep, Duotrope and I are still locked in a battle of wills about what an acceptable acceptance rate is--they might not know they're locked, but they are. I've been watching my ratio creep slowly downward, feeling both depressed and triumphant. "See?" I would think. "Thirty percent was just a serious fluke. This is more how it is. Watch, they'll see me get like twenty rejections in a row--they'll see."

Then, I went and sold another story.

Duotrope, you and I aren't finished yet!

Also, my story will be out in August, at Strange Horizons, for they are the ones who purchased it. I find it quite likely that I will post a link when it comes out.

Can't even tell you how glad I am Friday is coming, not that it will help anything. Nothing seems to help anything right now--too few hours in the day, and it doesn't seem to matter if I choose to spend them diligently or not, the to-do lists don't grow shorter, only aimed further into the future.

I need to learn how to manage deadlines better. And my time in general. Even though I've been through two or three time management classes and know all the tricks, or a lot of them, anyway. There's this one exercise you do where you sort things by urgency and importance and whatever, and they get shelved into four quadrants, and you just don't every bother with the things in Quadrant 4, because there lies the perfect crossroads of Things That Aren't Worth Doing? Yeah, see. Those things aren't actually up to me not to do. If it makes it onto my to-do list in the first place, it's already made it through the Pre-Sorting Mechanism that is my brain, or is a requirement of obtaining some sort of financial compensation, which, again, see, Pre-Sorting Mechanism.

There is no Quadrant 4. Quadrant 4 is a lie.

(And THERE was the perfect cap on the day: the cat who likes to sleep under my desk lamp knocked over my glass of water. Narrowly avoiding everything electrical SOMEHOW, through a divine intervention, I suppose--anyway. Phew. Cleaned up.)

(Seriously. Why isn't there more give in modern life? How are we supposed to do all this? I never claimed to be bored as a child. This is not some sort of ironic punishment. I WAS TOLD THAT THE UNIVERSE DOLES OUT IRONIC PUNISHMENTS. THIS IS NOT JUSTICE.)

Happy anniversary to me. Seven years ago today, I stopped goofing off and started sending out short stories for serious, for real, with systematic effort, intending to get published.

I'd sent stuff out a few times before. The very first effort was "The Library Murders" when I was 15, which I sent to Women's World Weekly on the recommendation of a family friend, without reading (or knowing where to find) the guidelines or sending an SASE. I made a nearly-good effort (sent two stories out at the same time after pouring over The Writer's Market!) in... '98 or '99 (complete with a very poor cover letter, because the advice in that edition was... not helpful. I sent a cover letter appropriate to non-fiction free-lancer). Two rejections later, and I gave up, until I entered a bunch of contests for no reason that seems good to me now.

And then, I got my head out of my bum and went for it. Not a little bit of the reason was because splash_the_cat and roane were doing that very thing, and showed me the way. So, a big thanks to those ladies, no question!

Seven years. Not so long, in the grand scheme of things... incredibly long in the short-term. I've missed out on some fun things for writing, I've given up gaming, I've ditched grad school twice, and I've several times stopped myself from getting a second job so I could have nicer things. For writing, I read less than I'd like to, snap at my family more than I'd like to, and have a much filthier house than I'd like to. But at the same time, I've met a lot of fine people, I've worked through a lot of my issues more fully than therapy would get me, and I've had a whole lot of fun, both in my head and at workshops, conventions, and retreats.

It is not coincidental that tomorrow is the 7th anniversary of my 28th birthday, either.

Since then, I've sold fifteen short stories, a bunch of reprints, and three books--two of which I haven't written yet. I've gotten into a year's best anthology, had numerous audio adaptations made of my shorts--and over two hundred rejections. For every success, there's been at least a month of self-doubt; for every sale, there are about a dozen rejections. I get a lot of joy from writing, but keeping the misery out of it is hard work, harder than the writing itself. Other writers know this. (So do the people who live with me.) All told, it has required more patience than I thought I possessed.

It definitely beats not knowing what I want to do with my life.

And, for me, grad school.

If I had it to do all over again? Knowing what I know now? All of that? I'd write more, and fret less. I'd worry less about when the world was going to recognize my jeeeen-yus. I'd have more patience with my writing, and less with my self-doubts. More patience with the advancement of my career, less with my whining.

But, other than that--no. Wouldn't change a thing.

Onward, to the next seven.

Just one other snippet of writhing, through the power of time travel and my text editor:

It is December 9th, and I need to tell you about freaking out.

My agent is taking my book to auction tomorrow. There are four editors "interested" and two who've passed and three we haven't heard from. I AM LITERALLY FALLING APART. LITERALLY. MY NOSE JUST FELL OFF. THERE IS BLOOD EVERYWHERE.

Okay, that part was a lie.

I need to email my agent. I don't know how this is going to go. I need her to tell me how to keep my nose on. It's not off yet, but it's seriously a matter of time. I'm jittering too much to keep the nose on for much longer.

---

So, here I am, 111 days after selling a book. I have felt at times, in between the writhing and the near-bursting, rather like the dog who has caught the car: "So, what do I do now?"

The answer, of course, is probably "opposable thumb implants and driving lessons."

And then, yesterday, not two hours after the contract showed up, I got my edit letter.

So, you know, there's now THAT to freak out about. So. Nothing new there.

Because this actually has been a long road of freaking out. I am not, apparently, the sort of person who thinks she deserves nice things to happen. Or something? I kept waiting for the evil shoe to drop. For the editor to wake up and say, "Nah, you know, nah. I was crazy for wanting that book." Especially since the contract just kept not being done and not being done and not being done. I tried to maintain positivity, but honestly, the longer I waited, the more I was sure it was all going to come to an abrupt end. I had little mental conversations. "Well, then, logically," I would say to myself in the shower, "my agent will just try to sell the book again." But it hasn't come to an abrupt end. I got the contract. Things are moving forward.

I've been trying to figure out how I'm supposed to be now; how I'm not supposed to talk about being freaked out, and how I'm supposed to pretend to be cool professional writer chick who is unfazed by this publishing gig. But that won't ring true. I'm still going to angst, and fret, and freak out, just like I did all along the way. I guess, if you're inclined to hate reading about that, you may want to remove me from your reading list. I could offer to filter, I suppose. We'll see how it goes.

Five years ago, if you'd pointed out a writer in my position who was angsting and fretting about their tremendous opportunity and good luck, I'd have clicked the back button in disgust.

With good reason. Five-years-ago Me didn't need to know any of that stuff. Especially since this is the place I wanted to be, regardless of how daunting I now find it.

I find myself pondering things like my edit letter (which also came yesterday) with some trepidation. "Hoo boy," I say, in my best hitchin-up-my-pants way. "Hoo boy, now comes the hard work."

But to say that the hard work is ahead dismisses the last seven years of work, the last twenty-seven years of ambition. To say, "I want to be a writer" was no great challenge for a seven-year-old; saving up for a typewriter actually wasn't too much harder for the eleven-year-old, either. I wrote to escape, back then. It just happened to be lucky that I was getting in some useful practice. But each step along the way, things got incrementally harder. And at times, I chose the easy path, and the writing suffered for it. (On the other hand, I got out and lived a little, so maybe the writing benefited, too; but I could have--and should have--practiced my craft more.)

( 7/27 )

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, that I realize that there is still a lot of hard work ahead--perhaps even the hardest, if sales aren't brisk right off the bat, or I run into rough criticism, or any of the 900 other things that might trip me up--but the last seven years may have been the hardest I'll ever face, because I had to do it all on faith. Faith in myself, I might add, which is kind of a perennial problem with most people I know. (They either have way too much or way too little.)

So, no. I don't like saying the hard work is ahead of me, because it not only dismisses my last 7 years, but the people who are also working on faith and fumes.

On the other hand, to say that the hard work isn't ahead of me is a bloody big lie.

So.

I guess the hard work is ALL AROUND. I am floating on an ocean of hard work. I just spent seven years paddling away from shore with all my might. And now I'm here. In the ocean. Out of sight of land. And they just handed me a slightly more ergonomic paddle and said, "Get going. You're paddling until you sink, or until you die."

(Not unlike marriage, then.)

Hm. Yeah. Ergonomic paddles, ahoy.

But my agent sold my book.

And two more.

Yep, a three-book deal... to HarperCollins Children's.

Back on December 10th, I might add, and I've been writhing with impatience for months now, but the contracts came today, and I mailed them off, and Caitlin said I can tell you all.

You know how people post those "I have a secret and I can't tell you?" entries? I couldn't do it. The whole time, I knew if I did it, it would end in disaster. So I wrote all my impatience into entries that I stuck in a text file. When I get home, I will post them. And you can marvel at my writhing. Because it was mighty.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

(from "Senlin" by Conrad Aiken)

I used to think that there was nothing better than the first stanza of that poem. Now I'm older, and I can go all the way to stanza 6.